THAT TO STUDY PHILOSOPHY IS TO LEARN TO DIE.

CICERO says "that to study philosophy is nothing but to prepare
one's self to die." The reason of which is, because study and
contemplation do in some sort withdraw from us our soul, and employ it
separately from the body, which is a kind of apprenticeship and a
resemblance of death; or else, because all the wisdom and reasoning in
the world do in the end conclude in this point, to teach us not to
fear to die. And to say the truth, either our reason mocks us, or it
ought to have no other aim but our contentment only, nor to endeavor
anything but, in sum, to make us live well, and, as the Holy Scripture
says, at our ease. All the opinions of the world agree in this, that
pleasure is our end, though we make use of divers means to attain
it: they would, otherwise, be rejected at the first motion; for who
would give ear to him that should propose affliction and misery for
his end? The controversies and disputes of the philosophical sects
upon this point are merely verbal- Transcurramus solertissimas
nugas- there is more in them of opposition and obstinacy than is
consistent with so sacred a profession; but whatsoever personage a man
takes upon himself to perform, he ever mixes his own part with it.

Let the philosophers say what they will, the main thing at which
we all aim, even in virtue itself, is pleasure. It amuses me to rattle
in their ears this word, which they so nauseate to hear; and if it
signify some supreme pleasure and excessive contentment, it is more
due to the assistance of virtue than to any other assistance whatever.
This pleasure, for being more gay, more sinewy, more robust, and
more manly, is only the more seriously voluptuous, and we ought to
give it the name of pleasure, as that which is more favorable, gentle,
and natural, and not that of vigor, from which we have denominated it.
The other, and meaner pleasure, if it could deserve this fair name, it
ought to be by way of competition, and not of privilege. I find it
less exempt from traverses and inconveniences than virtue itself; and,
besides that the enjoyment is more momentary, fluid, and frail, it has
its watchings, fasts, and labors, its sweat and its blood; and,
moreover, has particular to itself so many several sorts of sharp
and wounding passions, and so dull a satiety attending it, as equal it
to the severest penance. And we mistake if we think that these
incommodities serve it for a spur and a seasoning to its sweetness (as
in nature one contrary is quickened by another), or say, when we
come to virtue, that like consequences and difficulties overwhelm
and render it austere and inaccessible; whereas, much more aptly
than in voluptuousness, they ennoble, sharpen, and heighten the
perfect and divine pleasure they procure us. He renders himself
unworthy of it who will counterpoise its cost with its fruit, and
neither understands the blessing nor how to use it. Those who preach
to us that the quest of it is craggy, difficult, and painful, but
its fruition pleasant, what do they mean by that but to tell us that
is always unpleasing? For what human means will ever attain its
enjoyment? The most perfect have been fain to content themselves to
aspire unto it, and to approach it only, without ever possessing it.
But they are deceived, seeing that of all the pleasures we know, the
very pursuit is pleasant. The attempt ever relishes of the quality
of the thing to which it is directed, for it is a good part of, and
consubstantial with, the effect. The felicity and beatitude that
glitters in Virtue, shines throughout all her appurtenances and
avenues, even to the first entry and utmost limits.

Now, of all the benefits that virtue confers upon us, the contempt
of death is one of the greatest, as the means that accommodates
human life with a soft and easy tranquillity, and gives us a pure
and pleasant taste of living, without which all other pleasure would
be extinct. Which is the reason why all the rules center and concur in
this one article. And although they all in like manner, with common
accord, teach us also to despise pain, poverty, and the other
accidents to which human life is subject, it is not, nevertheless,
with the same solicitude, as well by reason these accidents are not of
so great necessity, the greater part of mankind passing over their
whole lives without ever knowing what poverty is, and some without
sorrow or sickness, as Xenophilus the musician, who lived a hundred
and six years in perfect and continual health; as also because, at the
worst, death can, whenever we please, cut short and put an end to
all other inconveniences. But as to death, it is inevitable:

and, consequently, if it frights us, 'tis a perpetual torment, for
which there is no sort of consolation. There is no way by which it may
not reach us. We may continually turn our heads this way and that,
as in a suspected country, quae, quasi saxum Tantalo, semper
impendet. Our courts of justice often send back condemned criminals
to be executed upon the place where the crime was committed; but,
carry them to fine houses by the way, prepare for them the best
entertainment you can-

The end of our race is death; 'tis the necessary object of our
aim, which, if it fright us, how is it possible to advance a step
without a fit of ague? The remedy the vulgar use is not to think on't;
but from what brutish stupidity can they derive so gross a
blindness? They must bridle the ass by the tail.

Qui capite ipse suo instituit vestigia retro,

'tis no wonder if he be often trapped in the pitfall. They affright
people with the very mention of death, and many cross themselves, as
it were the name of the devil. And because the making a man's will
is in reference to dying, not a man will be persuaded to take a pen in
hand to that purpose till the physician has passed sentence upon
him, and totally given him over, and then between grief and terror,
God knows in how fit a condition of understanding he is to do it.

The Romans, by reason that this poor syllable death sounded so
harshly to their ears, and seemed so ominous, found out a way to
soften and spin it out by a periphrasis, and instead of pronouncing
such a one is dead, said, "Such a one has lived," or "Such a one has
ceased to live;" for, provided there was any mention of life in the
case, though past, it carried yet some sound of consolation. And
from them it is that we have borrowed our expression, "The late
monsieur such and such a one." Peradventure, as the saying is, the
term we have lived is worth our money. I was born between eleven and
twelve o'clock in the forenoon the last day of February, 1533,
according to our computation, beginning the year the 1st of January,
and it is now just fifteen days since I was complete nine-and-thirty
years old; I make account to live, at least, as many more. In the
meantime, to trouble a man's self with the thought of a thing so far
off, were folly. But what? Young and old die upon the same terms; no
one departs out of life otherwise than if he had but just before
entered into it; neither is any man so old and decrepit, who, having
heard of Methuselah, does not think he has yet twenty years good to
come. Fool that thou art, who has assured unto thee the term of
life? Thou dependest upon physicians' tales: rather consult effects
and experience. According to the common course of things, 'tis long
since that thou hast lived by extraordinary favor: thou hast already
outlived the ordinary term of life. And that is so, reckon up thy
acquaintance, how many more have died before they arrived at thy age
than have attained unto it; and of those who have ennobled their lives
by their renown, take but an account, and I dare lay a wager thou wilt
find more who have died before than after five-and-thirty years of
age. It is full both of reason and piety too, to take example by the
humanity of Jesus Christ Himself; now, He ended His life at
three-and-thirty years. The greatest man, that was no more than a man,
Alexander, died also at the same age. How many several ways has
death to surprise us?

Quid quisque, vitet, nunquam homini satis
Cautum est in horas.

To omit fevers and pleurisies, who would ever have imagined that a
duke of Brittany should be pressed to death in a crowd as that duke
was, at the entry of Pope Clement, my neighbor, into Lyons? Hast
thou not seen one of our kings killed at a tilting, and did not one of
his ancestors die by the jostle of a hog? Aeschylus, threatened with
the fall of a house, was to much purpose circumspect to avoid that
danger, seeing that he was knocked on the head by a tortoise falling
out of an eagle's talons in the air. Another was choked with a
grapestone; an emperor killed with the scratch of a comb in combing
his head. Aemilius Lepidus with a stumble at his own threshold, and
Aufidius with a jostle against the door as he entered the
council-chamber. And between the very thighs of woman, Cornelius
Gallus the praetor; Tigillinus, captain of the watch at Rome;
Ludovico, son of Guido di Gonzaga, Marquis of Mantua; and (of worse
example) Speusippus, a Platonic philosopher, and one of our popes. The
poor judge Bebius gave adjournment in a case for eight days, but he
himself meanwhile, was condemned by death, and his own stay of life
expired. While Caius Julius, the physician, was anointing the eyes
of a patient, death closed his own; and, if I may bring in an
example of my own blood, a brother of mine, Captain St. Martin, a
young man, three-and-twenty years old, who had already given
sufficient testimony of his valor, playing a match at tennis, received
a blow of a ball a little above his right ear, which, as it gave no
manner of sign of wound or contusion, he took no notice of it, nor
so much as sat down to repose himself, but, nevertheless, died
within five or six hours after, of an apoplexy occasioned by that
blow.

These so frequent and common examples passing every day before our
eyes, how is it possible a man should disengage himself from the
thought of death, or avoid fancying that it has us, every moment, by
the throat? What matter is it, you will say, which way it comes to
pass, provided a man does not terrify himself with the expectation?
For my part, I am of this mind, and if a man could by any means
avoid it, though by creeping under a calf's skin, I am one that should
not be ashamed of the shift; all I aim at is, to pass my time at my
ease, and the recreations that will most contribute to it, I take hold
of, as little glorious and exemplary as you will.
Praetulerim... delirus inersque videri,
Dum mea delectent mala me, vel denique fallant,
Quam sapere, et ringi.
But 'tis folly to think of doing anything that way. They go, they
come, they gallop and dance, and not a word of death. All this is very
fine: but withal, when it comes either to themselves, their wives,
their children, or friends, surprising them at unawares and
unprepared, then what torment, what outcries, what madness and
despair! Did you ever see anything so subdued, so changed, and so
confounded? A man must, therefore, make more early provision for it;
and this brutish negligence, could it possibly lodge in the brain of
any man of sense (which I think utterly impossible), sells us its
merchandise too dear. Were it an enemy that could be avoided, I
would then advise to borrow arms even of cowardice itself; but
seeing it is not, and that it will catch you as well flying and
playing the poltroon, as standing to't like an honest man-

-let us learn bravely to stand our ground, and fight him. And to begin
to deprive him of the greatest advantage he has over us, let us take a
way quite contrary to the common course. Let us disarm him of his
novelty and strangeness, let us converse and be familiar with him, and
have nothing so frequent in our thoughts as death. Upon all
occasions represent him to our imagination in his every shape; at
the stumbling of a horse, at the falling of a tile, at the least prick
with a pin, let us presently consider, and say to ourselves, "Well,
and what if it had been death itself?" and, thereupon, let us
encourage and fortify ourselves. Let us evermore, amidst our jollity
and feasting, set the remembrance of our frail condition before our
eyes, never suffering ourselves to be so far transported with our
delights, but that we have some intervals of reflecting upon, and
considering how many several ways this jollity of ours tends to death,
and with how many dangers it threatens it. The Egyptians were wont
to do after this manner, who in the height of their feasting and
mirth, caused a dried skeleton of a man to be brought into the room to
serve for a memento to their guests.

Where death waits for us is uncertain; let us look for him
everywhere. The premeditation of death is the premeditation of
liberty; he who has learned to die, has unlearned to serve. There is
nothing of evil in life, for him who rightly comprehends that the
privation of life is no evil: to know how to die, delivers us from all
subjection and constraint. Paulus Aemilius answered him whom the
miserable king of Macedon, his prisoner, sent to entreat him that he
would not lead him in his triumph, "Let him make that request to
himself."

In truth, in all things, if nature do not help a little, it is
very hard for art and industry to perform anything to purpose. I am in
my own nature not melancholic, but meditative; and there is nothing
I have more continually entertained myself withal than imaginations of
death, even in the most wanton time of my age:

Jucundum quum aetas florida ver ageret.

In the company of ladies, and at games, some have perhaps
thought me possessed with some jealousy, or the uncertainty of some
hope, while I was entertaining myself with the remembrance of some
one, surprised, a few days before, with a burning fever of which he
died, returning from an entertainment like this, with his head full of
idle fancies of love and jollity, as mine was then, and that, for
aught I knew, the same destiny was attending me.

Jam fuerit, nec post unquam revocare licebit.

Yet did not this thought wrinkle my forehead any more than any
other. It is impossible but we must feel a sting in such
imaginations as these, at first; but with often turning and re-turning
them in one's mind, they, at last, become so familiar as to be no
trouble at all; otherwise, I, for my part, should be in a perpetual
fright and frenzy; for never man was so distrustful of his life, never
man so uncertain as to its duration. Neither health, which I have
hitherto ever enjoyed very strong and vigorous, and very seldom
interrupted, does prolong, nor sickness contract my hopes. Every
minute, methinks, I am escaping, and it eternally runs in my mind,
that what may be done to-morrow, may be done to-day. Hazards and
dangers do, in truth, little or nothing hasten our end; and if we
consider how many thousands more remain and hang over our heads,
besides the accident that immediately threatens us, we shall find that
the sound and the sick, those that are abroad at sea, and those that
sit by the fire, those who are engaged in battle, and those who sit
idle at home, are the one as near it as the other. Nemo altero
fragilior est: nemo in crastinum sui certior. For anything I have
to do before I die, the longest leisure would appear too short, were
it but an hour's business I had to do.

A friend of mine the other day turning over my tablets, found
therein a memorandum of something I would have done after my
decease, whereupon I told him, as it was really true, that though I
was no more than a league's distance only from my own house, and merry
and well, yet when that thing came into my head, I made haste to write
it down there, because I was not certain to live till I came home.
As a man that am eternally brooding over my own thoughts, and
confine them to my own particular concerns, I am at all hours as
well prepared as I am ever like to be, and death, whenever he shall
come, can bring nothing along with him I did not expect long before.
We should always, as near as we can, be booted and spurred, and
ready to go, and, above all things, take care, at that time, to have
no business with any one but one's self:

Quid brevi fortes jaculamur aevo
Multa?

for we shall there find work enough to do, without any need of
addition. One man complains, more than of death, that he is thereby
prevented of a glorious victory; another, that he must die before he
has married his daughter, or educated his children; a third seems only
troubled that he must lose the society of his wife; a fourth, the
conversation of his son, as the principal comfort and concern of his
being. For my part, I am, thanks be to God, at this instant in such
a condition, that I am ready to dislodge, whenever it shall please
Him, without regret for anything whatsoever. I disengage myself
throughout from all worldly relations; my leave is soon taken of all
but myself. Never did any one prepare to bid adieu to the world more
absolutely and unreservedly, and to shake hands with all manner of
interest in it, than I expect to do. The deadest deaths are the best.

A man must design nothing that will require so much time to the
finishing, or, at least, with no such passionate desire to see it
brought to perfection. We are born to action.

Quum moriar medium solvar et inter opus.

I would always have a man to be doing, and, as much as in him lies, to
extend and spin out the offices of life; and then let death take me
planting my cabbages, indifferent to him, and still less of my
garden's not being finished. I saw one die, who, at his last gasp,
complained of nothing so much as that destiny was about to cut the
thread of a chronicle history he was then compiling, when he was
gone no farther than the fifteenth or sixteenth of our kings.

We are to discharge ourselves from these vulgar and hurtful humors. To
this purpose it was that men first appointed the places of sepulture
adjoining the churches, and in the most frequented places of the city,
to accustom, says Lycurgus, the common people, women, and children,
that they should not be startled at the sight of a corpse, and to
the end, that the continual spectacle of bones, graves, and funeral
obsequies should put us in mind of our frail condition.

And as the Egyptians after their feasts were wont to present the
company with a great image of death, by one that cried out to them,
"Drink and be merry, for such shalt thou be when thou art dead;" so it
is my custom to have death not only in my imagination, but continually
in my mouth. Neither is there anything of which I am so inquisitive,
and delight to inform myself, as the manner of men's deaths, their
words, looks, and bearing; nor any places in history I am so intent
upon; and it is manifest enough, by my crowding in examples of this
kind, that I have a particular fancy for that subject. If I were a
writer of books, I would compile a register, with a comment, of the
various deaths of men: he who should teach men to die, would at the
same time teach them to live. Dicearchus made one, to which he gave
that title; but it was designed for another and less profitable end.

Peradventure, some one may object, that the pain and terror of
dying so infinitely exceed all manner of imagination, that the best
fencer will be quite out of his play when it comes to the push. Let
them say what they will: to premeditate is doubtless a very great
advantage; and besides, is it nothing to go so far, at least,
without disturbance or alteration? Moreover, nature herself assists
and encourages us: if the death be sudden and violent, we have not
leisure to fear; if otherwise, I perceive that as I engage further
in my disease, I naturally enter into a certain loathing and disdain
of life. I find I have much more ado to digest this resolution of
dying, when I am well in health, than when languishing of a fever; and
by how much I have less to do with the commodities of life, by
reason that I begin to lose the use and pleasure of them, by so much I
look upon death with less terror. Which makes me hope, that the
farther I remove from the first, and the nearer I approach to the
latter, I shall the more easily exchange the one for the other. And,
as I have experienced in other occurrences, that, as Caesar says,
things often appear greater to us at a distance than near at hand, I
have found, that being well, I have had maladies in much greater
horror than when really afflicted with them. The vigor wherein I now
am, the cheerfulness and delight wherein I now live, make the contrary
estate appear in so great a disproportion to my present condition,
that, by imagination, I magnify those inconveniences by one-half,
and apprehend them to be much more troublesome, than I find them
really to be, when they lie the most heavy upon me; I hope to find
death the same.

Let us but observe in the ordinary changes and declinations we
daily suffer, how nature deprives us of the light and sense of our
bodily decay. What remains to an old man of the vigor of his youth and
better days?

Heu! senibus vitae portio quanta manet.

Caesar, to an old weather-beaten soldier of his guards, who came to
ask him leave that he might kill himself, taking notice of his
withered body and decrepit motion, pleasantly answered, "Thou
fanciest, then, that thou art yet alive." Should a man fall into
this condition on the sudden, I do not think humanity capable of
enduring such a change: but nature, leading us by the hand, an easy
and, as it were, an insensible pace step by step conducts us to that
miserable state, and by that means makes it familiar to us, so that we
are insensible of the stroke when our youth dies in us, though it be
really a harder death than the final dissolution of a languishing
body, than the death of old age; forasmuch as the fall is not so great
from an uneasy being to none at all, as it is from a sprightly and
flourishing being to one that is troublesome and painful. The body,
bent and bowed, has less force to support a burden; and it is the same
with the soul, and therefore it is, that we are to raise her up firm
and erect against the power of this adversary. For, as it is
impossible she should ever be at rest, while she stands in fear of it;
so, if she once can assure herself, she may boast (which is a thing as
it were surpassing human condition) that it is impossible that
disquiet, anxiety, or fear, or any other disturbance, should inhabit
or have any place in her.

She is then become sovereign of all her lusts and passions,
mistress of necessity, shame, poverty, and all the other injuries of
fortune. Let us, therefore, as many of us as can, get this
advantage; 'tis the true and sovereign liberty here on earth, that
fortifies us wherewithal to defy violence and injustice, and to
contemn prisons and chains.

Our very religion itself has no surer human foundation than the
contempt of death. Not only the argument of reason invites us to it-
for why should we fear to lose a thing, which being lost cannot be
lamented?- but, also, seeing we are threatened by so many sorts of
death, is it not infinitely worse eternally to fear them all, than
once to undergo one of them? And what matters it, when it shall
happen, since it is inevitable? To him that told Socrates, "The thirty
tyrants have sentenced thee to death;" "And nature them," said he.
What a ridiculous thing it is to trouble ourselves about taking the
only step that is to deliver us from all trouble! As our birth brought
us the birth of all things, so in our death is the death of all things
included. And therefore to lament that we shall not he alive a hundred
years hence, is the same folly as to be sorry we were not alive a
hundred years ago. Death is the beginning of another life. So did we
weep, and so much it cost us to enter into this, and so did we put off
our former veil in entering into it. Nothing can be a grievance that
is but once. Is it reasonable so long to fear a thing that will so
soon be despatched? Long life, and short, are by death made all one;
for there is no long, nor short, to things that are no more. Aristotle
tells us that there are certain little beasts upon the banks of the
river Hypanis, that never live above a day: they which die at eight of
the clock in the morning, die in their youth, and those that die at
five in the evening, in their decrepitude: which of us would not laugh
to see this moment of continuance put into the consideration of weal
or woe? The most and the least, of ours, in comparison with
eternity, or yet with the duration of mountains, rivers, stars, trees,
and even of some animals, is no less ridiculous.

But nature compels us to it. "Go out of this world," says she, "as
you entered into it; the same pass you made from death to life,
without passion or fear, the same, after the same manner, repeat
from life to death. Your death is a part of the order of the universe,
'tis a part of the life of the world.

"Shall I exchange for you this beautiful contexture of things?
'Tis the condition of your creation; death is a part of you, and while
you endeavor to evade it, you evade yourselves. This very being of
yours that you now enjoy is equally divided between life and death.
The day of your birth is one day's advance toward the grave.

"All the whole time you live, you purloin from life, and live at
the expense of life itself. The perpetual work of your life is but
to lay the foundation of death. You are in death, while you are in
life, because you still are after death, when you are no more alive;
or, if you had rather have it so, you are dead after life, but dying
all the while you live; and death handles the dying much more rudely
than the dead, and more sensibly and essentially. If you have made
your profit of life, you have had enough of it; go your way satisfied.

"'Cur non ut plenus vitae conviva recedis?'

"If you have not known how to make the best use of it, if it was
unprofitable to you, what need you to care to lose it, to what end
would you desire longer to keep it?

"Life in itself is neither good nor evil; it is the scene of
good or evil, as you make it. And, if you have lived a day, you have
seen all: one day is equal and like to all other days. There is no
other light, no other shade; this very sun, this moon, these very
stars, this very order and disposition of things, is the same your
ancestors enjoyed, and that shall also entertain your posterity.

"'Non alium videre patres, aliumve nepotes
Aspicient.'

"And, come the worst that can come, the distribution and variety
of all the acts of my comedy are performed in a year. If you have
observed the revolution of my four seasons, they comprehend the
infancy, the youth, the virility, and the old age of the world: the
year has played his part, and knows no other art but to begin again;
it will always be the same thing.

"Give place to others, as others have given place to you. Equality
is the soul of equity. Who can complain of being comprehended in the
same destiny, wherein all are involved. Besides, live as long as you
can, you shall by that nothing shorten the space you are to be dead;
'tis all to no purpose; you shall be every whit as long in the
condition you so much fear, as if you had died at nurse.

"Neither can it any way concern you, whether you are living or dead:
living, by reason that you are still in being; dead because you are no
more. Moreover, no one dies before his hour: the time you leave behind
was no more yours, than that was lapsed and gone before you came
into the world; nor does it any more concern you.

"Wherever your life ends, it is all there. The utility of living
consists not in the length of days, but in the use of time; a man
may have lived long, and yet lived but a little. Make use of time
while it is present with you. It depends upon your will, and not
upon the number of days, to have a sufficient length of life. Is it
possible you can imagine never to arrive at the place toward which you
are continually going? and yet there is no journey but hath its end.
And, if company will make it more pleasant or more easy to you, does
not all the world go the self-same way?

"'Omnia te, vita perfuncta, sequentur.'

"Does not all the world dance the same brawl that you do? Is there
anything that does not grow old, as well as you? A thousand men, a
thousand animals, a thousand other creatures, die at the same moment
that you die:

"To what end should you endeavor to draw back, if there be no
possibility to evade it? you have seen examples enough of those who
have been well pleased to die, as thereby delivered from heavy
miseries; but have you ever found any who have been dissatisfied
with dying? It must, therefore, needs be very foolish to condemn a
thing you have neither experimented in your own person, nor by that of
any other. Why dost thou complain of me and of destiny? Do we do
thee any wrong? Is it for thee to govern us, or for us to govern thee?
Though, peradventure thy age may not be accomplished, yet thy life is:
a man of low stature is as much a man as a giant: neither men nor
their lives are measured by the ell. Chiron refused to be immortal,
when he was acquainted with the conditions under which he was to enjoy
it, by the god of time itself and its duration, his father Saturn.
Do but seriously consider how much more insupportable and painful an
immortal life would be to man than what I have already given him. If
you had not death, you would externally curse me for having deprived
you of it; I have mixed a little bitterness with it, to the end,
that seeing of what convenience it is, you might not too greedily
and indiscreetly seek and embrace it: and that you might be so
established in this moderation, as neither to nauseate life, nor
have an antipathy for dying, which I have decreed you shall once do, I
have tempered the one and the other between pleasure and pain. It
was I that taught Thales, the most eminent of your sages, that to live
and to die were indifferent; which made him, very wisely, answer
him, 'Why then he did not die?' 'Because,' said he, 'it is
indifferent.' Water, earth, air, and fire, and the other parts of this
creation of mine, are no more instruments of thy life than they are of
thy death. Why dost thou fear thy last day? it contributes no more
to thy dissolution, than every one of the rest: the last step is not
the cause of lassitude; it does but confess it. Every day travels
toward death: the last only arrives at it." These are the good lessons
our mother Nature teaches.

I have often considered with myself whence it should proceed, that
in war the image of death, whether we look upon it in ourselves or
in others, should, without comparison, appear less dreadful than at
home in our own houses (for if it were not so, it would be an army
of doctors and whining milksops), and that being still in all places
the same, there should be, notwithstanding, much more assurance in
peasants and the meaner sort of people, than in others of better
quality. I believe, in truth, that it is those terrible ceremonies and
preparations wherewith we set it out, that more terrify us than the
thing itself; a new, quite contrary way of living; the cries of
mothers, wives, and children: the visits of astounded and afflicted
friends; the attendance of pale and blubbering servants; a dark
room, set round with burning tapers; our beds environed with
physicians and divines; in sum, nothing but ghostliness and horror
round about us: we seem dead and buried already. Children are afraid
even of those they are best acquainted with, when disguised in a
visor; and so 'tis with us; the visor must be removed as well from
things as from persons; that being taken away, we shall find nothing
underneath but the very same death that a mean servant, or a poor
chambermaid, died a day or two ago, without any manner of
apprehension. Happy is the death that leaves us no leisure to
prepare things for all this foppery.